Pause Icons
Two vertical bars, the natural counterpart to play — pause reads instantly as "stop here, resume later" across video players, audio controls, podcast apps, and animation toggles. This page collects pause icon variants across Pathwork's libraries, from a plain outline pair of bars to filled or circle-framed versions, so you can match the exact weight your media player needs.
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Frequently Asked Questions
A circled pause button (bars inside a circle) is the more common convention for standalone controls, like a large central player button, since the circle gives it a clear tappable boundary. A plain pair of bars without a frame is more typical inside an already-styled media control bar, where surrounding buttons provide their own visual structure.
Toggling a single icon element between play and pause states (swapping the SVG content based on playback state) is the standard approach, since it keeps the control's position and size consistent rather than managing two separate always-rendered elements and showing/hiding between them.
There's no strict standard, but most libraries use a gap roughly equal to or slightly narrower than each bar's width, keeping the icon reading clearly as 'pause' rather than looking like two unrelated separate lines. This is generally handled by the icon design itself rather than something you need to adjust manually.
Pause (two bars) and stop (a filled square) represent different actions — pause implies resuming from the same position, while stop implies resetting playback entirely. Many modern media players (especially for streaming) only offer pause and skip the separate stop control, since resetting to the beginning is less commonly needed than simply pausing.
Each icon keeps the license from its source library attached to it, and terms can differ depending on which library a specific icon comes from. Check the license shown on the individual icon's page before using it commercially.
Swapping between the play and pause icon shapes is the standard convention, since it directly reflects what clicking again will do next. Changing only color while keeping the same icon shape can leave users unsure whether the media is currently playing or paused.